


North Star

by wayward_stranger



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Characters, Drabble Fic, Happy Ending, M/M, One-Shot, University AU, also tsukishima wearing make-up, as if there aren't enough of those already, because i thought he'd look cool in make-up, fuck these gender stereotypes, kurotsukki - Freeform, punk!Kuroo, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 19:25:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_stranger/pseuds/wayward_stranger
Summary: “Let’s run away.”Tetsurou stopped running his fingers through Kei’s hair and looked down at him. Kei was staring past him, looking up at the sky above with resoluteness in his eyes. Tetsurou’s gaze moved from his eyes down to the fresh bruise on Kei’s chin. That bruise must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He held his hand.“Let’s do it.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheIntrovertedM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIntrovertedM/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Mel!! I hope my owl got to you in time and brought you cake. I never expected I'd meet someone as cool as you are online. Thanks for all those conversations about Fall Out Boy and Haikyuu!! and fanfiction and Voltron and *lowers voice* social problems. I really hope you enjoy this fic and that I can write more for you in the future ^^

“Tetsurou?” Kei whispered.

“Yeah?” he answered. The two of them were in the back of the Tetsurou’s pick-up truck, staring up at the night sky above them. Kei’s head was in his lap and Tetsurou was running his fingers through his blonde hair. If it had been any other day, the two of them would have felt quite peaceful. If Kei hadn’t recently been hit by his own mother for wearing make-up again to school, the two of them would have felt quite peaceful. That whole scene was replaying again and again in Kei’s head. Tetsurou didn’t see what happened but he could only imagine the events that took place. And despite that, it still caught him by surprise when he heard Kei say the next three words:

“Let’s run away.”

Tetsurou stopped running his fingers through Kei’s hair and looked down at him. Kei was staring past him, looking up at the sky above with resoluteness in his eyes. Tetsurou’s gaze moved from his eyes down to the fresh bruise on Kei’s chin. That bruise must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. He held his hand.

“Let’s do it.”

…

_The first thing Tetsurou thought when he saw him was ‘Wow, that’s a really cool color.’ It was Orientation Day in their university and even though Tetsurou didn’t necessarily have to be there, he still was._

_Despite his scary, ‘delinquent’ appearance with all the ear piercings, messy hair, and tattoo snaking from his back to his neck, Tetsurou didn’t quite fit into the stereotypes made about him. He never got into a fight, nor did he like skipping classes to smoke in secluded alleys. He actually really liked going to class and listening to his professors talk. Sometimes he even secretly attended other lectures that weren’t in his subject.  It didn’t really matter to him what they were talking about, whether it was chemistry or history or philosophy, he just liked listening to them talk. Orientation Day was an excellent time for him to not only get a chance to listen to all those lectures, but to see new faces as well._

_The freshman who sat beside him had quite an interesting face too. He was tall, a few centimeters taller than Tetsurou himself, with wavy blonde hair and large-framed glasses. His eyes were amber brown and framed with black, winged eyeliner. But what caught Tetsurou’s attention the most were the color of his lips: dark gray that bordered on black. Somehow, it made his complexion look paler and the color of his hair brighter._

_“Hello,” Tetsurou greeted with a smile as soon as the freshman kid sat down. But instead of returning his greeting, he rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest._

_“Whatever. Say what you have to say. I don’t care,” he sighed._

_“I think you look cool,” Tetsurou answered honestly._

_“And then you’ll ask for a picture and laugh at it behind my back,” the freshman continued, snapping at him slightly. “Or maybe you’ll go the extra mile and send it to all of your friends to make fun of.”_

_“And why do you think I’d do something like that?” Tetsurou asked, raising an eyebrow at him._

_“Because people like you always do things like that,” he said._

_“People like me?” Tetsurou nodded his head. “I see what you mean. And you’re basing it off… my appearance? Aren’t you?” He raised both his eyebrows at the boy and spread his hands before him. The freshman opened his mouth to say something before shutting it and tossing him an annoyed glance. Tetsurou smirked, knowing that he won the argument._

_“I don’t blame you for thinking that way though,” he shrugged. “I mean, you’ve probably been through some shit for you to act that way around me.” The freshman fell silent and looked at him with a considerably fewer amount of hostility._

_“Sorry about that,” he mumbled. “But that still doesn’t make me completely trust you,” he quickly added._

_“And that still doesn’t make me completely like you,” Tetsurou retaliated, although that was pretty much a lie. “But in all honesty, though you probably won’t believe me, I think you look cool.” The freshman blinked his eyes twice, caught completely off-guard, and cleared his throat._

_“Thanks,” he said. “I like your piercings too.” The grin on Tetsurou’s face broadened._

_“I’m Kuroo, by the way. Kuroo Tetsurou.”_

_“I’m Tsukishima Kei.”_

…

Kei packed the last of his clothes into his backpack and looked around his room to see if there was anything else he could bring with him. All he had in his bag were some clothes, his laptop, money, some toiletries, and his schoolbooks. He didn’t have any memorabilia with him, nothing to remind him of his past. But in all honesty, Kei didn’t think he wanted to bring any of that with him. The bruise his mother left on his face was enough for him.

Kei had been raised without a father ever since the divorce so he had been under the care of his mother ever since. Maybe ‘care’ wasn’t really the word to use. Constraint. Imprisonment. Harsh dictatorship. Those seemed like better words to describe his relationship with his mother.

“Hey, Kei!”

Kei looked up in surprise to see Tetsurou’s face looming through the window of his room. Kei held a finger up to his lips and walked briskly to the window, opening it to let Tetsurou in.

“I thought I told you to stop climbing up the tree,” Kei hissed. Tetsurou grinned broadly at him, no doubt pleased by the fact that Kei expressed worry for him in his own salty way.

“Are you done?” he whispered.

“Yeah. I packed everything already,” Kei nodded, pointing to the bag on his bed.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go already,” Tetsurou said impatiently, already sticking his leg out the window.

“Wait,” Kei grabbed his sleeve.

“What?” Tetsurou frowned. Kei gazed at him, his eyes drifting from his messy hair to his piercings and tattoo and black clothes that made him look like a thug. Sometimes, it surprised him when he realized that this man was the one who would be his escape, his source of freedom from the confines of his own family.

Now he understood why people usually say that love ‘just happens.’

Kei leaned forward and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips. “Thanks for doing this with me,” he whispered. He knew that it wasn’t easy, this whole business of running away. He knew that Tetsurou had a life here too and he had no reason to actually leave. But he was willing to throw it all away, just for him.

“Anything for you,” Tetsurou smiled, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Now come on, the train leave in an hour.”

“Alright,” Kei nodded, taking his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. Before stepping through the window, he turned around to cast one last look at his room. There was the desk where he studied for hours and hours about business strategies and economics even though he never wanted to do so in the first place. There was the closet where he stashed his make-up out of the view of his mother’s prying eyes. There was the bed where he spent hours letting frustration eat him up from the inside.

He didn’t think he’d miss any of it.

Kei stepped through the window.

_…_

_“Why are you removing it?” Tetsurou frowned when he saw Kei wiping off his lipstick with a paper napkin. His lips were a dark blue that almost black. Tetsurou liked the color today._

_“Because people are staring,” Kei clenched his teeth._

_“So what if they stare?” Tetsurou shrugged. “You wear lipstick all the time in school.”_

_“But that’s because you’re not always with me in school,” Kei said. “I know you don’t care about how other people think of you but I do. It’s fine if it’s just me.”_

_Tetsurou looked around at all the other people sitting in the café. It was true. All their eyes were on them. Some of them shifted their gaze when they saw Tetsurou looking at them. It wasn’t hard to imagine what most of them were thinking. There was a time when Tetsurou let himself sink down and be swallowed up by what the crowd wanted him to be. A time when he was scared of the eyes that stared at him._

_The worst part about trying to be like everyone else was not accepting who he was. Tetsurou remembered how much he used to hate himself for feeling different from everyone else. He remembered the day when he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, letting the hate pour off him in waves. And then he saw himself. Not the self that he was trying to be, but the one he wanted to be._

_He wasn’t despicable or ugly._

_‘You’re okay, Tetsu,’ he told himself that night. ‘You’re okay.’_

_Tetsurou found it amazing how Kei accepted himself, how he chose to find his own ways of rebelling against his mother no matter what. Tetsurou wished that he had that kind of strength back then. But the sad part about it was that no one recognized that strength. All they saw was a ‘queer in lipstick.’_

_Kei was so much more than that._

_Tetsurou leaned forward and kissed him right on the lips. Kei gasped a little in surprise at first and pulled away from him._

_“What are you doing?” he hissed, his eyes darting around._

_“Everyone saw, Kei,” Tetsurou rolled his eyes. “But guess what, I don’t care about what people will think of it. Maybe a whole of them hate it but I have no doubt that some of them support it.”_

_“But…”_

_“Sometimes I wish you had better people in your life Kei…” Tetsurou murmured. “People who didn’t hurt you for being who you are.”_

_“Well, the world’s not exactly an excellent place,” Kei said bitterly. “But it doesn’t matter so much to me anymore. I have you anyway…” he added in a quieter voice._

_“But I’m just one person,” Tetsurou protested._

_“Yeah… but you’re pretty much everything to me already…” Kei said softly, staring down at his hands instead of looking up at him._

_Tetsurou felt his mouth open slightly in surprise. To him, Kei always seemed like a huge walled fort. Closed-off and impenetrable. But with those few words, Tetsurou began to feel like the walls around him were slowly breaking down._

…

“Here we are…” Tetsurou said as soon as they heard the train come in. Kei felt himself sit up a little straighter in his seat. Tetsurou stood up and the two of them began to walk towards the train but before entering, Kei stopped and pulled on his sleeve.

“What’s wrong?” Tetsurou asked, turning around to look at him. Kei bit his lip and looked down.

“Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t go in the first place,” he said.

“But earlier you said—“

“Well I wasn’t thinking earlier,” Kei huffed. “It’s just that… I don’t want you to throw away what you have right now. You have a job, a life, a family who cares for you too. What will they think when you just move away?”

“They’d be glad I’m finally growing up,” Tetsurou chuckled and cupped Kei’s face with his hand. “Don’t worry, it’s going to work out for the both of us. I have a friend somewhere in Tokyo who’s willing to help us settle down there for a while. And you’ve got your super talented brains that can get you anywhere.”

“These things don’t always work out you know? No matter how romantic they are,” Kei said. “What if we get lost, Tetsurou? What if we just… fall apart?”

Tetsurou’s gaze softened. He remembered what Kei had gone through: the divorce of his parents that somehow led to his mother mistreating him. Ever since then, Kei had been forced to continue the family line of running his mother’s business. If not, she threatened to disown him. Kei knew that his mother would kill him if she knew he was wearing make-up too. And despite that, he persisted in wearing it secretly when he went to class. Other than the fact that he thought it looked, it made him a little happier knowing that he was going against his mother’s wishes.

And that transgression cost him dear. The bruise on the side of his face was evidence of that. Tetsurou ran a delicate finger over it.

“We’re not going to get lost,” he said confidently. “And I’m going to stay with you for a very, very long time. You’re a lot stronger than you think you are Kei and I’m not going to let you disappear if you stay here.”

Kei glanced up at the sky. There weren’t a lot of stars in the area but he could still clearly make out the North Star among the many others. A long time ago, his father took him out camping in the woods. He taught him how to use the stars to navigate and told him that the one star he always needed to remember was the North Star. If he was ever lost, all he ever needed was to look up at that star to find his way.

Kei looked at Tetsurou with his cocky, overconfident smile and outstretched hand. And without another word, the two of them held hands and stepped into the train.


End file.
